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Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 3 of Thomas Sowell’s 1993 collection, Is Reality Optional?:

If safety fanatics are allowed to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, that can also kill people. Already safety crusades are cracking down on the “pollution” of waterways involving traces of chemicals more minute than those found in tap water, sodas, beer, or even Perrier or Evian water. How much standard of living – which includes medical care – are we prepared to sacrifice in order to eliminate ever more remote dangers?

Even to ask such a question requires accepting the reality of economic constraints – and the trade-offs this implies. But those for whom indignation has become a way of life reject economics as readily as they reject history, geography, or anything else which implies that they cannot “have it all.”

DBx: Written decades ago, the above words by Sowell were, obviously, not aimed specifically at the absurd ‘precautions’ taken in the name of avoiding exposure to the coronavirus of 2019. But the same wise principle applies.

Humanity can always obtain some additional increment of protection from Covid-19. But at what cost? That this question has been, and continues to be, largely ignored – that every step believed to reduce exposure to the coronavirus is assumed to be worthwhile – is evidence of the reality of Covid Derangement Syndrome.

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